♪ >> hello and a very warm welcome to "european journal," the magazine from brussels where we have stories from all over europe for you. incredibly impounded. why the bailiffs claimed has transcripts. crimes and forgotten -- house some germans are finally facing justice, and lucky number. the village in spain that hit the jackpot. a little something is better than nothing.

greece's deal lifted a huge burden, but it took a lot of lobbying from the european union to push the deal through. not everybody has such a strong lobby. you just need to lose your job or become ill or both, and then you start getting letters reminding you to pay your bills. then some more letters, and after awhile, the bailiff turns up and puts a seal on objects of value. in the czech republic, the bailiff can turn up without much warning, and sometimes put a seal on some very unusual object indeed. >> for centuries, the charles bridge has been one of prague's's most famous landmarks. but this winter, something changed. the bridge over the river leading up to the castle no longer belongs to the city of prague. it has been impounded. tourists are all talking about what they would do with the bridge if the court bayliss makes good on his threat and

sells it. it is a topic of some amusement. >> i would set it up back home. >> if this were muybridge, what would i do with it? party. it is a great location. >> the bridge needs far too many repairs. i would rather have something else, actually. >> right now, something else is on offer -- prague's most famous landmarks have all been seized by the court. in theory, at least, they are all up for sale. the magistrate spokesperson explains what happened -- the city did not pay an outstanding bill for 6500 euros, so now, all city property is being held. >> it is the law. if you owe somebody just 10 krone and the late payment by just one day, then a garnishment can take effect. in theory, property worth 1

billion a career that can be placed under punishment. that is what happened to prague. >> the city property has been seized. that is what the law says here in the czech republic. >> but it is no joking matter for this woman. she is another victim of the law on garnishment. some time ago, she was called because a few times taking the street car without a ticket. she was issued a fine for fair dodging -- fare dodging. >> it is true. i was caught three, four, maybe five times without a ticket back when i was at university, but i did not think anything of it. those were my wildes didn't days. we were rebels. after that, nothing happened. 12 years later, i got a letter from the bay live with 12 garnishment notices. >> the fine was 150,000 krone,

6000 euros. the original fine she did not pay was 250 years. the bailout costs made up the rest of it, and the amount kept rising. more letters arrive. by then, she owed 20,000 euros. i did check law, that was perfectly legal, but as an actress, it was more than she could afford. >> i have been ruined completely. i had a university degree. i have not committed a crime. it is upset that my future is ruined just because i road without a ticket a few times many years ago. it is affecting every aspect of my life. i am 38 n. i am financially ruined. i do not know how i am going to recover from this. >> every month, perla is led to keep only its subsistence level income.

every cent above the bare minimum is garnish, and she is not the only one. thousands of citizens say they have been driven to ruin for what were petty offenses. the association of check bayless says the fees bailiffs' charge are justified. she says defaulting debtors have only themselves to blame. >> in nearly every case, it is the debtor who is at fault. after all, it is the debtor who put himself in the situation who did not fulfill his responsibility. he has not communicated with the creditor, did not pay bills on time, and the creditor put in an application for garnishment, and it is his right to do so. >> now, the issue has become a matter of public and political debate. the bailiffs are taking financial advantage, they say, and politicians are demanding changes to the law on garnishment. the bailiff cannot actually put the charles bridge on the auction block, but any change to

the law will come too late to help perla. but maybe something good will come of it. the absurdity of selling off the charles bridge has everyone talking, even if perla herself is not laughing. >> it happened almost 70 years ago, but it is a war crime that remains of forgotten. in june 1944, all the inhabitants of a small village in central france were killed. 642 people. most of whom were burned alive in the local church. none of the perpetrators of the massacre was ever charged in a german court. west germany simply refused to exit -- extradite the war crime suspects, but now, german police have launched a new investigation, and the suspects who are now in their 90's could potentially be held to account after all.

>> and market village in central france. time stopped here on june 10, 1944. it was a lovely saturday in summer, and many of the residents and visitors were doing their shopping or sitting at a cafe on the market square. no one could have guessed that the peaceful village would be destroyed that very afternoon. he was 19 at the time. this was the site of his parents' house. on that june morning in 1944 when more than 100 soldiers appeared, he thought they were simply passing through. >> but the soldiers got out, and

i saw all the villages on the road. they were running this way. when the soldiers got to where i was, i was standing here with my mother and two of my sisters. the soldiers ordered us all to get into the village square. >> the soldiers drove the entire population of the village on to the square and searched the houses. later, the villagers were divided into groups and taken away. >> we heard a loud bang from somewhere, and the soldiers started shooting. we all fell on top of each other. i lay on the bottom injured but not too badly. at some point, they stop

shooting and began to deliberately pick off those who were still moving. they covered us with all sorts of rubbish from the barn and set it on fire. >> robert was able to escape the burning barn and get to safety where he hid himself. he was one of only six inhabitants' who survive. more than 600 men, women, and children were killed. since then, he has testified that two trials, but the majority of the members involved that they were never convicted. one of the alleged perpetrators of the massacre lives in this house near berlin. he refuses to give interviews. the state prosecutor has filed charges against willie b. and

ordered his house searched last autumn. >> we rang the doorbell, and if i remember correctly, his wife let us in. we met him in the kitchen and spoke to him. he was surprised by our visit. he did not know we were coming. and his neighbors in the town in brandenburg were equally surprised when they found out about his past. one community official knew him well and had even worked with him. >> i was shocked because it was so unlike any experience i had had of him. i would never have imagined him involved in something like that. it really was a shocke.

>> but why is this case only now coming to light? an employee at the stasi records authority happened to come across the information while looking in all files from east germany. >> i knew from newspaper articles and some specialist literature that the stasi had 11 kilometers of original nazi files, which no one doubts that the stasi know about, and which were thought to have been destroyed. >> some of the documents also referred to a trial against heinz batt, who had been involved in the massacre. in 1983, he became the only one given a long prison sentence in east germany. he was really the superior officer. willie b. was also questioned during that case. he said he had begun of the church with 350 women and children were murdered by the troops.

the record states that willie b. remembers details of the massacre, but he says he did not take part in any killings. >> i find that implausible. it was a collectively perpetrated massacre. shortly after the allied landing in normandy, indoctrinated and radicalized young men marched into a village and had orders to wipe out the entire population -- men, women, and children. no one just stood by. >> but the prosecutor is skeptical. he is not sure willie b. will ever stand trial. >> it is not enough to have been there. if someone with this is a killing and was merely there at the time, that is not a

medically aiding -- automatically aiding and abetting. >> still, robert is glad they're investigating the case. his mother and two of his sisters burned in that church. but today, he is less concerned with a conviction that he is finally finding out the truth. it is still not known why the company targeted them for destruction. >> the idea of modern europe was born after the trauma of the second world war and has since grown to allow ever more integration. the european union is still an intriguing project for many countries on its borders, despite problems. turkey, iceland, and the balkans all of them want to join in.

national identities play a major role in europe, and in the balkans in particular. serbia has just been granted candidate status by the eu, but the move was almost derailed because neighboring romania insisted on one condition -- serbia had to promise to protect the romanian-speaking vlak minority. until then, hardly anyone in brussels had heard of them, so we were intrigued and sent our reported to the region. >> orthodox afternoon prayer in serbia. this church is right next to the romanian border. he has gathered a small community of believers to do something that he is not actually allowed to do -- he is leading prayers in romanian. in doing so, he is defying the serbian orthodox bishop. the church does not see the people here as romanians, but as

bilingual serbian blacks, but it does not recognize their language. in order to pray in remaining in, he built his own church on private land. >> the land was left to me by my grandparents. the only possibility we had to build a church was here out in the open countryside. if the authorities have realized what we were doing, they would have put a stop to it immediately. >> people here feel strongly about praying in romanian. >> we get people coming from all around, not just from our village. >> the serbian orthodox church appears concerned that the romanian community is seeking to break away from it completely and is putting up a fight. >> it is a disaster what our government is doing. they are denying us our basic

rights to hold a service in romanian and to belong to the romanian orthodox church. the ministry for religious affairs in belgrade is constantly putting obstacles in our way, also when it comes to allowing our native tongue to be spoken in schools. >> this wrangling is nothing new. the church-building project is only one bone of contention among many. over the course of history, the impoverished strip of land on the banks of the danube has given birth to a very diverse group of people. it is an area where mysticism has flourished. she is deemed to have supernatural powers, and this is her chamber of magic. this padlock, she says, will bring good luck. she then says an incantation in old romania, an arcade dialect that is no longer spoken in romania.

she tells her husband to break open the forest. in the meantime, she says another incantation. he soon returns with the law that has now been broken open. our session is complete. after a short prayer, we are free to go. our journey continues. this mining community is home to both serbs and vlaks. the minority have set up a political party. and what remained to be a recognized language, which they are free to speak in the public's fear. m over the course of the centuries, we have always been marginalized by the serb state in all its various forms. >> the party appealed to the

romanian government for help and got a response. bucharest went to brussels to demand serbia protect the rights of the vlaks. >> we were never able to learn anything about ourselves at school. that has led us into real identity crisis. >> this, even though they are included in the constitution. >> it is like a trick. the serbian state recognizes us as a minority group in the constitution, but that has no bearing on real life. >> but the serbian government's official representative takes a different view. he believes they are a serbian ethnic group. he dismisses all talked of their being rumanian and all calls to recognize the romanian language. >> they do not ask. they just tell us serbians what to do. the language has to be romanian. we once had one of them here

from romania. what was his name? giorgio, yes. he spoke to a group of 10 of us. so i asked him why he was here, what he wanted from us. he stomped his fist on the table. >> their identity provokes heated discussion. insist there is no question about their ancestry. historical sources confirm it. >> the only known priest between 1780 and 7090 came from romania. why would he come here if there were no romanians' here? >> he says serbia should recognize romanian as the language of the vlaks, just as other minority languages are recognized elsewhere in europe. >> in spain, villages sometimes have their very own bizarre ways

of making headlines. one village became famous for having cut the country's biggest play at -- paella. another regularly stages a to made a throwing battle. another of those villages got recognized for #-- 58628. they took part in the christmas lottery, the villagers, and the number one the more than 120 million euros. but just because you are wealthy does not mean you have to change your life, right? >> the initial outlay was just 20 cents, but the return was massive. they still gamble in the village pub, but they are no longer waiting for that big win. every single one of them has a list 100,000 euros to their name. some are even billionaires', but the mood is distinctly modest. >> now i have to pay the barman. he never lets me off.

>> he is just catching his winnings to pay for these coffees. >> he tells us what happened on december 22, the day they became millions of euros richer. >> we drank a lot that day. there was a lot of celebration. tv broadcasters, interviews. it was crazy, crazy day. >> spain's national lottery is a television extravaganza. schoolchildren single out the winning numbers. in spain, lottery players buy shares in number. all the shares in the winning number in christmas lottery were bought in and around this village. the champagne flowed for days. spain's credit rating dropped two grades, but the party continued.

the rural tranquillity has since returned, and people are now showing more restraint. they are not keen on being asked about their fortune. but all the finally agreed to talk to us. she is the one who organized the sale of christmas lottery tickets and picked the winning number. she does not keep her winnings at home, but she is still concerned and does not let anyone see her house. >> i took my to get back from door-to-door. i asked everyone. the financial crisis made things particularly difficult, but they still bought tickets. in fact, they all did. >> except for one, but we will get to him later. sales representatives helping to sell luxury goods are being ignored. a ferrari merchant tried his luck in the village with no success. juan is the only one to tell us

exactly how much he has one -- 100,000 euros. >> i bought a few things, not much. i am just living as i did before -- going to work, played football, going out on saturday. monday, it starts all over. everything stayed the same period that her husband is a builder. he lost his job three years ago when the property bubble burst, said the win came just in time, but the villages are keeping their feet on the ground. >> it really has not changed anything. we live the same lives and keep going to work as usual. >> but not everything is the same period a man comes to the village to sell bread, which won local banks is overpriced. the salesman replies, "you have a pile of money now. calm down."

playing the situation down clearly does not work on everyone, but life here looks very ordinary. we discover one villager has treated himself to a brand new harley, he does not stick around to talk. the traditionally made money from agriculture. we need a sheep farmer. many young people will delay, seeing no future in farming, but he is now financially secure and does not need to worry about the future. will he be buying more sheet? >> no. i am going to be selling some. keeping sheet is not that profitable right now. prices have fallen. >> the wind does not change the fact that spain has a 23% unemployment rate and is suffering from austerity measures.

can afford to relax. but let's come back to the man who did not buy a ticket. he is originally from greece. his fellow villagers repaired his car for free, but otherwise, he missed out on the wings. is he said? i am not jinx. i could have finished building a house a little sooner, but that is all. >> but he may yet be able to earn some money. he wants to make a documentary film about the village cozy world renowned stroke of luck. >> that is all we have time for on today's european journal. we hope you enjoyed the show. and in again next week. until then, from all of us here in brussels, thanks for watching, and goodbye.

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